Minimizing Deaths from Temperature Extremes

Wright is Right

If you could raise or lower Earth’s overall temperature and had but one single objective, to minimize human deaths related to heat and cold, would you lower the temperature slightly, hold it steady, or raise it a bit?

It would help to have some information before answering.

According to a paper from 2015, Gasparrini et al., which analyzed data from “384 locations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, and USA,” cold is the real killer. “Most of the temperature-related mortality burden was attributable to the contribution of cold.” Overall, the study found that cold killed 17.4 people for every person killed by heat.

Consequently, to lower mortality, we should aim to increase Earth’s overall temperature.

Given this conclusion, consider a Wall Street Journal news story about Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Energy. The author of the WSJ article was determined to highlight why Wright is wrong. What evidence was given?

According to the author, Wright disagrees with Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, the Biden administration, health researchers, “accepted scientific findings,” scientists, and climate scientists. So, of course, he must be wrong.

Further, Wright sides with “climate deniers,” “skeptics,” and “controversial climate thinkers.” As if to seal our assessment of him, the author said Wright has expressed his views on PragerU and Fox News.

Note that while Wright might confer with “climate deniers,” none of whom are named in the article, Wright himself cannot be called a denier. He argues that “burning fossil fuels is contributing to rising temperatures” and that climate change poses a modest threat to humanity. Is that what constitutes “climate denial” in 2024?

The article goes on to say: “Wright also argues that global warming probably reduces modestly the number of annual deaths related to extreme temperatures.” The article tries to explain why he’s wrong. “Recent estimates from health researchers suggest otherwise. They say that in coming decades, the rise in extreme heat-related deaths will outweigh the decline in extreme cold-related deaths.”

This is deceptive.

As we saw with the Gasparrini study, cold is deadlier than heat. If cold is killing 17.4 times as many people as heat, it would be mathematically impossible for a slight increase in temperature to kill more. In an extreme situation, we could end up with heat killing more than cold, but to get there would necessarily involve moving through a point where fewer die overall because we’ve reduced the cold-caused deaths more than we’ve increased the heat-caused deaths.

Wright was looking at small changes and the author of the article jumped to extreme situations. Previously in the article, Wright said, “[a] little bit warmer isn’t a threat. If we were 5, 7, 8, 10 degrees [Celsius] warmer, that would be meaningful changes to the planet.” He was thinking on the margin. He was thinking about small changes and he used the term, “a little bit.”

The WSJ jumped to an extreme outcome: “They say that in coming decades, the rise in extreme heat-related deaths will outweigh the decline in extreme cold-related deaths.” Yes, maybe eventually. But to get there we will necessarily move through a phase in which cold-related deaths will have dropped much more than heat-related deaths have grown, resulting in fewer deaths overall.

In the article’s quest to show that Chris Wright is the wrong choice to head the DOE, it inadvertently provided another example of biased news reporting. Wright is right that, “global warming probably reduces modestly the number of annual deaths related to extreme temperatures.”